RoboCop Reboot Imagines a Future Where ‘Bots Police the World

Director Paul Verhoeven’s classic RoboCop came out in 1987 – and as such the film’s vibe had more of a Cold War America feel. Now it’s 2013, the Cold War is over, and militarized bots – or drones, rather – are real. As such, director José Padilha’s reboot is taking RoboCop international for a drone-aware world.

“I’m a fan of the original movie, because it was ahead of its time – both aesthetically and thematically,” Padhila says in the introduction to the film’s latest trailer (above). “Back in ’87 it was talking already about automated violence – both in war and law enforcement – so now we actually have that happening in our lives, and it’s going to be more and more present.”

Padilha goes on to say that his flick hopes to address that. It’s interesting to think that a big shoot-em-up action flick would address drone warfare, but if there’s a movie that could do it, it would be a RoboCop remake. The original had its own political overtones about violence in inner city Detroit, so why shouldn’t this one 26 years later (yikes, has it really been that long) do so as well?

Judging by the new trailer, Padilha’s film will get at this by showing that roboticized police forces in the future (the movie is set in 2028) are serving and protecting in countries around the globe – but not America. As Samuel L. Jackson’s Pat Novak intones, “It is great to see American machines helping to promote peace abroad – so then tell me, why can’t we use these machines here at home? Why is America so robo-phobic?” Anyone who has ever seen a sci-fi flick knows the answer to this (because it can all go very, very wrong, duh), but if the movie truly is an examination of life in the drone era then the answer is much more complicated. Would Americans want to use the same forces used at home and abroad?

It’s hard to tell if Padilha’s film – out February 2014 – will really delve deep into those questions or just glance at the issues based on this trailer, which takes off from Novak/Jackson’s booming – ironically Tony Stark-esque – speech and goes into a series of clips that that make it look quite a bit like a standard big action flick. It also seems to hew closely to the original – in a good way – with Michael Keaton as the mastermind of the robo-making OmniCorp and The Killing’s Joel Kinnaman as the titular cop’s human innards Alex Murphy.

Mixing politics, dystopic futures and man-machine melds can be tough (see: Elysium) but if this could end up more like Dredd with an edge, it could be a hell of a ride.